Anxiety is persuasive because it speaks in possibilities rather than evidence.

Anxiety argues in the language of what could happen, and possibilities cannot be disproved. However thoroughly you answer one, another can be generated instantly, which is why reasoning with worry so often feels like losing. Evidence lives in a different register: what has actually happened, how often, and what usually follows. Anxiety avoids that register because it does not win there.

When a worry is pressing, ask it for base rates instead of scenarios. How many times has this happened before, and what came of it. Write the answer down. You are not trying to win the argument, only to stop treating an unlimited supply of imagined futures as though it were information.